Thursday, 7 June 2012

Cameroons, like New Labour, are an ahistorical bunch ("junior partners in 1940" - remember that? ), so it shouldn't come to any surprise that Cameron and Osbourne are plainly unaware that stopping the emergence of a united continent has been at the heart of British European policy for hundreds of years, but the shear unbelievable stupidity of is nevertheless breath-taking.

For a start, it would, as the excellent Ambrose Evans-Pritchard said in his webchat today be "an unworkable superstate that has no historic or cultural roots" permanently locking economic malaise in the periphery, bailed out by huge capital transfers from the Germanic North. More importantly, it is hard to see how such a state could be achieved through democratic consent of Europe's peoples, instead being imposed from the above by the elites.

It doesn't take many powers of analysis to know that such a state would be likely to be wracked by insurrection and civil war within a few years. But, from the British point of view, an even worse nightmare would be the external realities of the situation. Imagine that: an undemocratic state of over 500 millions souls only 22 miles across the channel, in all probability economically failing, with a predisposition to blame 'Les Anglo-Saxons' and their wicked free-market model for their problems. Irrespective of whether hostility would ever manifest itself in terms of a military threat (and it wouldn't take much to threaten us militarily these days, thanks to the destruction by this government of our Armed Forces) life would feel pretty uncomfortable.

Once again, we see from the Tory high command not only it's contempt for democracy but also its myopia and cynicism, sacrificing a principled strategy for short term political tactics again and again: the tactics in this instance being, of course, that it is not in Britain's interest to talk down the Euro for fear of creating future bad blood unnecessarily.

Although there is merit in the argument that we must try to avoid blame for the total catastrophe which may engulf the Eurozone, it that case surely the best course of action is to stay completely silent on the matter. Or if you must encourage a United Europe, at least state that it must be done only with the consent of the people, which would effectively mean it would never happen. Instead Osbourne and Cameron are actively cheer-leading for the final fruition of the original Jean Monnet dream: a United Europe by the elites, for the elites. Thankfully for us, the German courts have ruled that any moves towards Fiskalunion to be unconstitutional.

So, in 2012 the British government seems to be actively campaigning for the destruction of European democracy while a German court emerges as it's principle defender.